The Lemonheads - It's a Shame About Ray

The Lemonheads

“It’s a Shame About Ray”

            Let me take this opportunity to take you kids back to my freshman year of high school.  Pearl Jam and Nirvana were blowing up all over the place yet many of the students at my school were still rocking out to the hair bands of the 80s.  Augusta had just launched an Alternative/College Radio Station called Channel Z and it was fantastic.  I will never forget the DJ saying, “I am pretty sure you people are going to dig this next song.  This band is like a poppy version of Pearl Jam with enough punk to satisfy your edge.”  That quote may be off a bit but you get the idea.  The song he played was “It’s a Shame About Ray” by The Lemonheads and he was right, I loved it.  I had some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket so I headed to the mall to see if I could find any albums from The Lemonheads.  I was crazy like that; I was going to buy an entire cd after only hearing one song.  This was likely due to the fact I could not find the cassette (yes, I said cassette) single. 

            After I hooked the cd discman up to the radio in my brother’s car, I hit the play button.  Evan Dando sang “She takes me on a rockin stroll” and I thought to myself that this is really good!  Less than two minutes later “Confetti” was off and running.  The song is about the painful divorce of Dando’s parents.  It was evident the songs were deeply personal.  Imagine singing about your father in an awkward marital situation, “He kind of should of sort of, would have loved her, if he could’ve/ He’d rather be alone than pretend/She just wanted him to love her but he didn’t.”  Sorry about your pain Evan, but it has given you an opportunity to write some amazing songs about it.  How does he do it with an alarmingly upbeat song?

            From that point on, I was a fan of the album.  “It’s a Shame About Ray,” the album’s third song, is the track that launched The Lemonheads into the cars and houses of just about every kid in college.  It was number one on the college radio charts for a while and it was the reason I bought this album.  “My Drug Buddy” was another look into Dando’s tough fight with addiction and “Bit Part” allowed Juliana Hatfield the opportunity to scream on a track.  To this day, my favorite song on the album is “Alison’s Starting to Happen.”  Perhaps it was the fifteen year old me loving the line, “Alison’s getting her tit pierced, Alison’s getting a mow hawk, Alison’s starting to happen to me.”  However, I still think it is a great song.

            The rising popularity of The Lemonheads led their record label, Atlantic, to negotiate that the band re-record “Mrs. Robinson” for the 25^th anniversary of The Graduate.  The track was added to a re-release of “It’s a Shame About Ray” and it sold a lot of copies despite Paul Simon saying he hated it.  With the added song, “It’s a Shame About Ray” is right around 30 minutes long.  I had listened to the entire album on my way home from the mall.  It was near Christmas so traffic allowed me to do so. 

            On the 20^th anniversary of the album, the band released a remastered version of the album with many demos of the songs from the album.  I recently purchased the Expanded album and it is just as good today as it was in 1992.  Head over to Dropbox and give it a listen.  Thirty minutes later, comment and let me know what you think.

Rock On

Brian Killips